'This is a situation of continuous embedding, which makes it impossible to find a first utterer' -Lyotard-

Artist Book ‘Trincomalee’

by lizangelfernando

This spring will see the exclusive launch of Liz Fernando’s beautifully crafted book

‘Trincomalee – My father’s stories and the lost photographs’

Liz Fernando has produced her honours degree work as part of the prestigious Summer Show of the University of Arts London entitled ‘Round About’. The book consists of stunning black and white photographs shot in 2011 in the city of Trincomalee accompanied by poetic and autobiographical writing.

Fernando’s work looks from an unusual perspective at the post civil war developments in Sri Lanka. It is the perspective of a daughter listening her father’s earliest memories of his upbringing in the peaceful setting of the 1950’s city of Trincomalee.
As humidity destroyed the photographic visual narrative of the family, the oral history and the fragile memories became the delicate string for these stories from Moor Street, naïve and beautiful little episodes between a Tamil girl and a Sinhalese boy. They are stories that describe a childhood lived in innocence whilst the post- colonial crisis between Tamils and Sinhalese was still to emerge.

As the country is recovering from nearly 30 years of civil war, these sensual and fragile memories exemplify what Sri Lanka really lost during this war: its deep sense of identity.